Linux Installation on HP Pavilion zt1185 : I gone mad. pl. help

Hi, I installed Linux 7.3 on HP Pavilion zt1185 laptop with partion. X Server is not starting up. Its running only in textmode. when i use startx, it is not started. looks like i need to modify XFConfig-4 file. Pl. any one help me for this specific laptop (zt1185) what is the configuration. If possible pl. send me your config file. It is really killing me. I have gone mad with this configuration........thank you very much,NS

Re: Linux Installation on HP Pavilion zt1185 : I gone mad. pl. help

It looks like your S3 graphics chip is probably too new for XFree86 2.4.0 to recognize. You can check the xfree86.org site to see if anything newer supports your chip. You could also search the internet for something like 'XFree86 S3 0x8d04' to identify any other computer owners who might have encountered the same problem.

In the meantime you can probably use the VESA framebuffer driver to get XWindows working. Here are a few relevant lines from my (old) /etc/X11/XF86Config file:

Re: Linux Installation on HP Pavilion zt1185 : I gone mad. pl. help

DO NOT INSTALL LINDOWS 3.0.2 the resolution is only maxed out to 1024.768. the zt1185 supports 1400x1050. And the scroll pad is all screwed up. I tried to delete lindows with partition magic, when i rebooted it crashed my win xp. DOES YOU LAPTOP FEEL REALLY HOT FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE zt1185? ... have you had any problems? ... have your tried linux 8.2 redhat?

Re: Linux Installation on HP Pavilion zt1185 : I gone mad. pl. help

Same problem here exactly. What you need to do is have partition magic re-create the MBR. The easiest way to do this is if you had a raw copy of the directory "btmagic.pq" you could create a very small DOS fat partition near the front of the disc and copy that directory to the root. Then run "bmcfg.exe" you will then have the option to "Enable bootmagic" by doing so, it will re-write that Bootloader with BootMagic. If you don't have that raw directory, I could rar it up and send it to you with only the necessary files for booting, or you will have to create a 500 meg or so partition and install one of the win9x os's on it so you can install bootmagic on it. no need to install any drivers on windows except enough to boot. Once you can install programs, install bootmagic and it will create that \btmagic.pq directory under the root which will be C if you chose to hide you other partitions. At that point you will be able to re-add Windows XP to the menu and boot without a problem. The error I received after a lindows install was "autochk.exe" missing then a blue screen of death with a session mananger error. This is the only known way to save your exisiting windows installations.

One more piece of info as an amateur in the field of Linux (i'm mainly a windows/dos guy)

Red Hat has an option under custom install to avoid having to do this again where lindows is lacking. You will choose to install the boot loader on the "first sectory of the linux boot / main mount point partition. NOT the "MBR" doing this will allow bootmagic to come up as ususal and you will be able to add your red hat intall from the bmcfg.exe command or if you retain windows, you can do it in there to. in most cases lilo wants to take over the mbr if you don't instruct it otherwise. But I did encounter an issue with mandrake 9.0. Same occurance but I had to reformat my hard drive because it some how probed it as a 50 gig drive and it trashed the partition table without any successful fixing. I have a Drive Image Pro backup of my system updated regularly, so it was easy to restore my XP in this case. But "DO NOT DELETE" your XP, it is not trashed, just the boot record with linux is changing the structure that NT kernals want to boot from as specified in the boot.ini of the windows xp root dir. Bootmagic will do the trick but if you still have linux on there, you may still encounter a problem do to the boot.ini file and will need to gain access to it so you can modify the partition it boots from. If you need any more help regarding this, send off an e-mail to me. my direct e-mail is mrvoice@hotmail.com checked daily and will be happy to help someone who is going through what I did! But I'm all good now. -Scott